Worse Than Nickelback, Better Than Gonorrhea

As you know by now, Public Policy Polling's had some fun with the latest numbers (pdf) on Congress' popularity. Respondents were asked whether they had a higher opinion of Congress or 26 various items. The news wasn't all bad though:

At least you can cure gonorrhea. Congress seems unfixable. Andrew Gelman wonders if it's a spoof: "But all those crosstabs . . . they look real. So I don’t know what to think." Pareene points to the latest reason to lampoon Congress:

The HuffPo’s Ryan Grim and Sabrina Siddiqui obtained a PowerPoint presentation given to incoming Democratic freshmen legislators by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the DCCC’s recommended schedule for House members includes four hours spent on the phone begging rich people for money and one hour spent begging rich person for money in person. This is the daily schedule. As Kevin Drum notes, this leaves no time for studying or homework. …

This, as much as anything else, is why our Congress is both dysfunctional — legislators have no clue what they’re voting for or against most of the time — and so attentive to the priorities of the very wealthy.

Update from a reader:

I was surprised to see you state in your post that "At least you can cure gonorrhea." That statement seems like poor timing given the news of antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea that's been circulating over the past two days.